Grand Coulee Dam | Bureau of Reclamation Columbia River Basin in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana & Wyoming About the Columbia River: Above Grand Coulee Dam | Columbia River | US EPA About the Columbia River: Above Grand Coulee Dam Grand Coulee Dam Lower Columbia: Bonneville Dam to the Pacific Ocean The free-flowing headwaters of the Columbia River are located in the Canadian Rockies where snowmelt and spring water fill Columbia Lake near British Columbia's border with Alberta. From the headwaters, the river flows 600 miles downstream and swells behind Grand Coulee Dam. Grand Coulee is the first of 14 dams along the Columbia River. Below are summaries of key EPA projects in the upper part of the Columbia River basin, from the U.S.-Canada border to Grand Coulee Dam. Upper Columbia River Contamination Investigation EPA and other studies have found contamination in sediment in the upper Columbia River from past industrial practices, including heavy metals and other pollution like dioxins and furans. A large metal smelter in Trail, British Columbia, is a primary source of metal contamination to the site. Teck Cominco, owner and operator of the smelter, is funding and leading parts of an environmental investigation under EPA's oversight.

The investigation extends from the U.S.-Canada border to the Grand Coulee Dam, and includes surrounding upland areas in northeast Washington. EPA's Upper Columbia River contamination investigation Bunker Hill Superfund Site The Bunker Hill Mining and Metallurgical Superfund Site, located in northern Idaho and eastern Washington, was listed on the Superfund National Priorities List in 1983. EPA and its partners have made a great deal of cleanup progress, reducing risks to the health of people and the environment. More work remains, and the cleanup is expected to take decades. It's one of the most vast and complex Superfund sites in the U.S., within one of the largest historical mining districts in the world. The site includes mining-contaminated areas in the Coeur d'Alene River corridor, adjacent floodplains, downstream water bodies, tributaries, and fill areas. It also encompasses the 21 square mile Bunker Hill "Box", located in the area surrounding the historical smelter operation. EPA's Bunker Hill Superfund cleanup Spokane River Regional Toxics Task Force The Spokane River Regional Toxics Task Force (Task Force) leads efforts to find and reduce toxic compounds in the Spokane River.

The goal of the task force is to develop a comprehensive plan to bring the Spokane River into compliance with water quality standards for PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls). These pollutants exceed water quality standards in several segments of the river. The Spokane River Regional Toxics Task Force is actively working to: Further analyze the existing and future data to better characterize the amounts, sources, and locations of PCBs and other toxics as defined above entering the Spokane River. Prepare recommendations for controlling and reducing the sources of listed toxics in the Spokane River. Review proposed Toxic Management Plans, Source Management Plans, BMPs, and data to be used to develop performance-based limits. Monitor and assess the effectiveness of toxic reduction measures. The Task Force operates under a Memorandum of Agreement which was signed in 2012 by Spokane County, the City of Spokane, the Liberty Lake Sewer and Water District, Inland Empire Paper Co., Kaiser Aluminum, Spokane Regional Health District, Washington State Department of Health, the Spokane Riverkeeper (a program of the Center for Justice), the Lands Council, Lake Spokane Association and Washington State Department of Ecology. The US Environmental Protection Agency, Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, Tribes, and Avista have advisory roles.

Grand Coulee Dam: History and purpose Grand Coulee Dam: History and purpose Oct 31, 2008 John Harrison Grand Coulee ( map ) is the largest dam in the Columbia River Basin and one of the largest in the world. Everything about the dam is large: it is 550 feet (167.6 meters) tall, measured from its foundation in solid granite, or approximately 350 feet (106.7 meters) from the downstream river surface to the top of the dam. It is 5,223 feet (1,592 meters) long, or 57 feet short of a mile. (Read the March 2016 Smithsonian article on the 75th anniversary of the dam's completion.) Grand Coulee Dam is the largest concrete structure ever built. Several other dams in the world are larger, but they include earthen berms (when completed 2009, the Three Gorges Dam in China will be roughly three times the size of Grand Coulee).

Grand Coulee is 450-500 feet thick at its base and 30 feet thick at the top, and it contains 11,975,521 cubic yards (9,155,944 cubic meters) of concrete, three times as much as Hoover Dam. The dam has four power plants. The two original power plants, the first of which began producing power in 1941, are called the Left Power Plant and the Right Power Plant. The two power plants, each of which houses nine large generators, are split by the spillway, which is 1,300 feet wide and covers an area of 13.26 acres. According to the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the dam, the Left Powerhouse has three generators with a total capacity of 3 megawatts to provide power at the dam site, plus nine generators rated at 125 megawatts each. The Right Powerhouse has nine generators rated at 125 megawatts apiece. The original 18 generators began operating between 1941 and 1950.

The Third Power Plant contains three generators rated at 600 megawatts apiece and three rated at 805 megawatts. These first of these six generators began operating in 1975, and the sixth in 1980. The Pump-Generator Plant, which is located on the west bank of the river, contains 12 pumps that lift water up the hillside to a canal that flows into Banks Lake, the 27-mile-long reservoir for the Columbia Basin Project . Six of the pumps can be reserved to generate about 50 megawatts each. Individual penstocks carry water to each generator at Grand Coulee. The largest of these, at the Third Power Plant, are 40 feet in diameter and carry up to 35,000 cubic feet per second of water, or more than twice the average annual flow of the Colorado River. The dam complex includes three switchyards to transmit electricity into the regional power grid. The total generating capacity is 6,809 megawatts and its average annual energy output is about 2,300 megawatts, or enough power to continuously supply the needs of two cities the size of Seattle.

Grand Coulee is located at river mile 596.6 in central Washington about 90 miles northwest of Spokane near the place where an ice floe dammed the river during the last Ice Age. The ice forced the river to rise from its historic channel and flow to the south, where it carved a giant canyon — the Grand Coulee. Eventually the ice retreated, and the river returned to its old channel Grand Coulee impounds a reservoir, Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake, named for the president who authorized construction of the dam, which began in 1933 (see construction photos ). Lake Roosevelt backs up the river almost to the Canadian border, a distance of 151 miles. Hydropower accounts for 79.7 percent of Grand Coulee’s authorized purposes, the others being irrigation and flood control . While hydropower is the primary purpose of the dam today, the public desire for irrigation was the driving force behind its construction.

One of the first, if not the first, published reports of a proposal to irrigate the Columbia Plateau with water from the Columbia River was in 1892, when the Coulee City News and The Spokesman-Review reported on a scheme by a man named Laughlin McLean to build a 1,000-foot-tall dam to divert the entire flow of the Columbia back into the Grand Coulee; he also earlier proposed a 95-mile canal across the Columbia Plateau from a diversion point somewhere farther upriver. These appear to be the first publicly discussed proposals for the dam that would be Grand Coulee, but they were just the ideas of a dreamer at the time. The idea of a big dam at the Grand Coulee didn’t resonate with the public until 1918. That year Rufus Woods, the visionary publisher of the Wenatchee World newspaper, began advocating for a dam that would provide irrigation water to the Columbia Plateau. It was a crusade for Woods, a natural-born promoter, and from the beginning he had influential allies, including attorneys Billy Clapp and James O’Sullivan, both of nearby Ephrata.

While no one person can be considered the “father” of the dam, these three men were among its earliest, most active and enthusiastic promoters. Clapp is credited with suggesting, in 1917, that if nature once blocked the Columbia with an ice dam that forced water into the now-dry Grand Coulee, man could do the same with concrete. O’Sullivan liked the idea and soon began writing articles about such a dam, and Woods published them in his newspaper. There were two schools of thought at the time about how the Columbia Plateau might be irrigated: pumping water up from the river or diverting it from farther upstream and bringing it to the area in canals. Neither idea prevailed, but each had staunch advocates. The federal Reclamation Service and the state of Washington had spent thousands of dollars looking for ways to provide irrigation; a 1914 bond measure that would have paid for irrigating a portion of the area had failed.

O’Sullivan, Woods, Clapp and many other local people favored pumping water from behind a dam; influential business leaders in Spokane, home of the privately owned Washington Water Power Company, which owned its own hydroelectric dams, favored canals that would divert water from the Pend Oreille River in northeastern Washington. Soon, the battle was joined between the “pumpers” and the “ditchers.” Pumpers like O’Sullivan saw potential benefits in hydropower. “The revenue from the sale of electric energy alone would surely pay all the upkeep, interest on the investment; and provide a sinking fund for the liquidation of the cost of the project itself,” he wrote in a 1918 article in the World. The pumpers distrusted the ditchers, whose backers were the big business and power interests in Spokane, including Washington Water Power, Spokane’s biggest employer at the time. The ditchers wanted to irrigate the Columbia Basin with water from the Pend Oreille River. The canal would begin at Albeni Falls and run downhill, through tunnels where necessary, to the Ritzville area.

The pumpers saw this as another attempt by arrogant Spokanites to control all of eastern Washington Washington Governor Ernest Lister was a “ditcher.” In a speech in November 1918, he commented that “at least 50,000 families could be accommodated on the lands mentioned in the project.” Lister died in office in 1919, and the acting governor, Louis F. Hart, did not feel so strongly about the gravity project. This was a blow to the ditchers. Washington Water Power tried to kill the pumping project by proposing to build its own dam at Kettle Falls. In 1922 the Federal Power Commission granted a preliminary permit. If the dam had been built, it would have limited the size of the dam at Grand Coulee 110 miles downriver, effectively killing the pumping proposal. The dam at Coulee had to be high enough to make pumping feasible. In response to Water Power’s ploy, Woods editorialized that the Spokane utility was a “soulless corporation.” A variety of studies were conducted in the 1920s; some supported the canal plan and others the dam.

Lobbying was fierce, as supporters of the two proposals sought to win members of Congress to their sides. There were public events — pro-canal or pro-dam rallies — and quieter behind-the-scenes lobbying. The Bureau of Reclamation, envisioning success with Hoover Dam, was partial to big irrigation projects. O’Sullivan personally lobbied Arthur Powell Davis, the Commissioner of Reclamation, to support the dam. Senators Wesley Jones and Clarence Dill of Washington persuaded President Hoover in 1929 to support a $600,000 study of Columbia River by the Corps of Engineers. The study by Major John S. Butler of the Seattle district of the Corps, completed in 1932, recommended a series of 10 dams on the river, including one at Grand Coulee and others in British Columbia. Called the “308 Report” for the number assigned to it by the House of Representatives, it supported a dam over a canal to provide irrigation water. The pumpers were pleased. Roosevelt was elected president the same year the 308 Report was issued, and with the nation reeling from the Depression dams on the Columbia offered promise of employment as well as hydropower and irrigation.

Roosevelt initially balked at the $450 million cost estimate for Grand Coulee (it was more than the Panama Canal, he argued, and would produce more power and potentially irrigate more than was needed at the time). But he had promised Dill before the election that he would build it if he won. Western support was critical to his victory, and now Dill — one of those supporters — pressed the president to follow through. Roosevelt responded that he would support a low dam — 150 feet tall from bedrock instead of 550 feet as proposed — that could be raised later, if necessary. Dill, shocked, countered with a proposal for $100 million; Roosevelt compromised at $63 million, and that was the deal. So construction began in 1933 on a low dam with a foundation large enough to eventually support a high dam. By 1935, the plans were upgraded and the high dam was under construction. Roosevelt, a master politician, had found a way to mollify critics who said the dam would be too big and too expensive by beginning construction with a modest amount of money on a comparatively modest structure.

The power generated by a high dam, eight times more than the low dam, would be used, he believed. Importantly, net revenues from power sales also would repay the cost of the project, and thus the $63 million was an allotment for a federal project, and it was understood the amount would be repaid. Roosevelt’s New Deal policies supported the concept of multiple purposes dams — dams that generate power and also provide water for irrigation, recreation and flood control. A low dam for power only did not fit the paradigm, but the high dam at Grand Coulee did. Washington Governor Clarence Martin supported the high dam, and he reluctantly agreed that it should be a federal project, even though supporters like Woods and his Republican colleagues choked on the idea of a Democratic administration taking over “their” dam as a federal project. The Washington State Columbia Basin Commission, created for the purpose of directing state construction of the dam, whether a low dam or high dam, acquiesced to the federal takeover after finding itself hamstrung with state law requirements for such an undertaking and its own infighting. Woods objected to the federal takeover, too, but he had to accept the inevitable.

After negotiating with the Department of the Interior the commission agreed to federal construction while salvaging consultation rights and permission to keep commission representatives at the construction site. The federal project not only conformed with New Deal principles, it also conformed with Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes’s intentions that public relief projects should help the national recovery and create a valuable product able to pay for itself. Grand Coulee met all of the tests. After seven years of construction; the dam began operation on March 22, 1941, when its first large generator began producing power. Its completion at the beginning of World War II quieted its many critics, who had derided it as a colossal dam in the near-wilderness of a remote state, and whose only customers, according to one detractor in Congress, would be “sage brush and jackrabbits.” While it is true Grand Coulee contributed energy to the war effort by helping to power the Army’s nuclear facility at Hanford and the region's aircraft and aluminum industries, its impact was overrated at the time, according to historian Paul Pitzer, who has written extensively about the dam.

Bureau of Reclamation publicists and patriotic news reporters, among others, hailed Grand Coulee Dam as almost single-handedly winning World War II for the allies. In 1948, for example, Vice Presidential candidate Earl Warren remarked: “Probably Hitler would have beaten us in atom bomb development if it had not been for the hydroelectric development of the Columbia, making possible the big Hanford project which brought forth the bomb.” Pitzer comments in his book, Grand Coulee: Harnessing a Dream: “Grand Coulee Dam's contribution augmented those of Hoover Dam, the Tennessee Valley Authority dams and other hydro and non-hydroelectric projects nationally.... Grand Coulee allowed the government to produce aluminum and run Hanford while not disturbing the day-to-day lives of most Americans. The government could have diverted power from domestic uses but Grand Coulee, among other projects, made this unnecessary. Except for inconveniencing the civilian population, little would have changed had Grand Coulee not existed during World War II." Photo: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Columbia River Inn (Coulee Dam, WA) - UPDATED 2016 Motel Reviews - TripAdvisor © 2017 TripAdvisor LLC All rights reserved.

TripAdvisor Terms of Use and Privacy Policy . * TripAdvisor LLC is not a booking agent and does not charge any service fees to users of our site... (more) TripAdvisor LLC is not responsible for content on external web sites. Taxes, fees not included for deals content. Welcome back! Prices may have changed while you were gone. Please refresh the page to see the latest prices for Columbia River Inn. Refresh Prices PriceFinder is your ultimate hotel booking tool, checking hundreds of sites to help you find the lowest prices. Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area (U.S. National Park Service) Contact Us A Jewel in Northeast Washington In 1941 the Grand Coulee Dam was built on the Columbia River as part of the Columbia River Basin project, creating a 130-mile long lake. Named for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area provides opportunities for boating, fishing, swimming, camping, canoeing, hunting and visiting historic Fort Spokane and St. Paul's Mission. Grand Coulee Dam History | Bureau of Reclamation History Transcript PDF 23 kb Grand Coulee Dam was the key to the development of power on the Columbia River — the greatest potential source of hydroelectric energy in the United States.

Original plans considered ten dams on the Columbia River between the Canadian border and the mouth of the river. Grand Coulee Dam forms Lake Roosevelt, extending 151 miles upstream to the Canadian border. It has a 600-mile shoreline and a surface area of 82,000 acres. In 1948, Congress designated Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area , which is operated by the National Park Service. Grand Coulee Dam provides water to irrigate approximately 600,000 acres in the Columbia Basin Project . In addition to its irrigation and power functions, Grand Coulee Dam is a primary factor in controlling the floods on the Columbia River. Related Links Grand Coulee Dam: Impacts on fish Grand Coulee Dam: Impacts on fish Jan 22, 2010 John Harrison Of all the impacts that caused extinctions of Columbia River Basin salmon and steelhead, dams were the most significant. And the most significant of the dams, at least in terms of the number of known runs that were extinguished, is Grand Coulee.

The dam wiped out runs that spawned in tributaries that drained into the Columbia from that point, river mile 596, to the headwaters, a distance of 645 river miles. Adding the tributary miles where salmon spawned nearly doubled the distance. The Bureau of Reclamation, which built the dam, was aware of the impact Grand Coulee would have on salmon and steelhead and took steps to compensate for the losses through the construction of hatcheries . This was complicated, however, by the fact that the upper Columbia salmon runs had been declining for years before the dam finished them off. The Bureau contracted with the Washington Department of Fisheries to assess the runs and recommend a means of preserving them. The resulting 1938 report, issued by B.M. Brennan, director of the Department, detailed the decline of Columbia River salmon from multiple causes. The report contained recommendations for preserving and relocating the salmon and steelhead runs — the North Central Washington Upper Columbia River Salmon Conservation Project. The cost was estimated at $2.6 million, which would be paid from the Grand Coulee construction fund.

The plan called for trapping adult fish at Rock Island Dam and transporting them in tank trucks to release points in rivers and streams below Grand Coulee and also, eventually, to a hatchery that would be built at Leavenworth, on a Wenatchee River tributary called Icicle Creek. From there, juvenile fish eventually would be transported to release sites throughout north central Washington. It was an ambitious plan, but it did not appear to attract broad public interest. In the report, Brennan noted general public indifference regarding the plight of fish and, conversely, public enthusiasm for Grand Coulee Dam, which then was three years from completion but already had blocked the river. In the introduction of the report Brennan wrote: “The fishery of the Columbia River has been decreasing slowly since the turn of the century. The constant inroads of civilization have continually worked to the detriment of fish populations. First irrigation diversions, then small hydroelectric dams on several tributaries, then more and larger irrigation diversions, over-fishing by the commercial interests, increasing sport fishing, gaffing of fish on the spawning grounds, and increasing industrial and domestic pollution bringing pressure constantly against the fish populations have slowly decreased their former abundance.

So many factors were at work in so many ways, that the public’s attention was never riveted for any length of time on the decreasing value of this enormous natural asset. “. . . In the first burst of enthusiasm that the whole Northwest felt at the culmination of its plans, the fact that the construction of this dam would strike a serious blow to the Columbia River fishery was overlooked by the general public. When the plans for the high dam finally were approved, it became apparent that salmon could not be put over a dam of this height as they had been at the much lower Rock Island and Bonneville dams. The stock of salmon spawning in some 1,100 miles of river and tributaries was to be permanently destroyed. Further study revealed that the alternative methods for preserving these runs would be extremely expensive, if they were possible. There was a feeling that the vast economic gains to be derived from this project should not be endangered by consideration of the fish. It was even felt in some quarters that the fish were not worth the money that it would take to preserve them. “. . .

The irrigation and power developments in connection with the Grand Coulee project are confiscating valuable prior rights to the river held by the fish and therefore by the commonwealth to which the fish belong. It is only just that these developments pay compensation for these confiscations; that is, the cost for the apparatus necessary to perpetuate these runs should be included as a part of the capital investment of the dam and irrigation system, and the operation of this apparatus should be included in the operating costs of the irrigation and power developments.” Grand Coulee Dam thwarted the grand plans Washington had to rebuild the Columbia River salmon fishery. In discussing possible methods of protecting salmon and steelhead from the impact of the dam, Brennan noted: “There had been a systematic progression of improvements up the river with the idea in mind of bringing back every portion of the Columbia River watershed under the jurisdiction of the State of Washington into its former condition of productivity. . . [but] Grand Coulee Dam completely upset a large share of these plans and work.” According to Brennan’s report, “the pressure of public opinion” forced the construction of fish protective devices 400 miles downriver at Bonneville Dam.

The pressure of public opinion also may have played a part in the decision of the Bureau of Reclamation, then called the Reclamation Service, to preserve some remnant of the salmon and steelhead that its dam at Grand Coulee would wipe out. Making the decision was the easy part; making it happen was the hard part. As Brennan notes in his report for the Reclamation Service, “there was left the question of what was the best way to take care of the fish.” Little was known, he wrote, and he might have added that there was little time. 1938 was the year construction at Grand Coulee Dam finally would cut off the river to migrating fish. An investigation was needed — of fish behavior, migratory patterns, abundance, spawning locations, tributary water flow and temperature. So many things. Because the state couldn’t afford such a study, the Reclamation Service gave the state $25,000 for a one-year investigation. The state didn’t receive the money until the spring migration of juvenile salmon nearly was over. Only six months of field study was possible. Brennan did the best he could. He began with the obvious — the dam itself. Fish passage would be impossible, he concluded.

“The construction of the low dam, as originally planned, would have presented no insurmountable obstacles to caring for the fish,” [but] “the present plan of constructing a dam with 350 feet of head completely alters this picture. For several reasons it is impractical, if not impossible, to put fish over a dam of this height and maintain a run with the project under its ultimate development.” Brennan cited five reasons why fish passage at Grand Coulee would not work. First, water immediately below the dam could be expected to fluctuate as much as 40 vertical feet within periods of minutes, depending on power production. It would be difficult, at least, to build a fish ladder that would operate efficiently in such conditions, he reasoned. Second, because the dam likely would be spilling water in the summer when the fish arrive on their upstream journey to spawn, the fish, which are attracted to agitated water, likely could not find the ladder entrance.

Third, in the spring and early summer, when the juvenile fish are heading to the ocean, the giant irrigation pumps would be sucking up to 18,000 cubic feet per second from a spot directly behind the dam, an amount of water Brennan likened to the flow of the Skagit River in western Washington. “It will be a practical impossibility to screen these pump intakes with mesh fine enough to keep the young fish out,” he wrote. “Large numbers [of young salmon and steelhead] would be pumped into the irrigation system to perish.” Fourth, water would not spill over the dam all year round, and so at certain times of the year — the fall, for example — young fish would be stuck behind the dam, where there likely would not be enough food for their survival through the winter. In the spring, when the river is higher, young fish swept over the dam would face a “. . .400-foot slide down the concrete face of the dam,” and “...all or mostly all would be killed.” Fifth, even if the fish could be carried over the dam in a column of water and not touch the concrete, where they would be battered and descaled, “. .

.it is questionable how safely they could negotiate this 350-foot fall.” That’s an understatement. So fish passage was impossible, or at least so improbably expensive and life-threatening that it wasn’t worthy of further consideration. But there was a larger problem than the concrete wall at Grand Coulee. The larger problem was with the fish themselves. These fish did not spawn at the dam, or anywhere near it. Some went all the way to the headwaters, and most spread out into myriad tributaries in Washington and southeastern British Columbia. There was almost no knowledge of how many salmon, as a percentage of those that cross Rock Island Dam, spawned above Grand Coulee. Many were believed destined for the Arrow Lakes , but that area was remote and virtually inaccessible by road and so a difficult place to count fish. Anecdotal evidence was useful, however, and the authors of the report noted a conversation with “an old Indian” at Kettle Falls on August 6, 1937, about sockeye salmon, also called blueback: “Although he did not know the fish by the name blueback, he recognized them when confronted with the specimens that had been caught.

He said that many years ago there used to be large runs of blueback at Kettle Falls, and the Indians used to congregate there to catch them, but in recent years the runs had been so small that the Indians had not fished them.” Based on this report and others, including interviews with residents near the Arrow Lakes, the biologists estimated that “more than 85 percent” of the sockeye crossing Rock Island Dam were destined for rivers other than the Wenatchee and the Okanogan, the only two sockeye rivers downstream of Grand Coulee. Sockeye are unique among salmon in that they spawn and rear in and around lakes, such as Lake Wenatchee and Lake Osoyoos, on the Wenatchee and Okanagon rivers, respectively. The problem for the biologists, of course, was that these fish, and other salmon that spawned in the upper Columbia, were not ready to spawn when they reached Rock Island Dam. “The salmon and steelhead when they reach [Rock Island Dam] are not ripe and will not spawn for several months,” Brennan wrote. “The blueback pass over the dam in July and August and do not spawn until the latter part of September.

The first Chinook salmon reach Rock Island in April and do not begin spawning until the latter part of August. The fall run of steelhead pass Rock Island in September, October and November and do not spawn until the following late winter and spring.” His solution was to hold the salmon, somehow, until they were ready to spawn and then transfer them to Columbia tributaries downstream of the dam — the Wenatchee, Entiat, Methow and Okanagon. But what about the salmon and steelhead that spawn in those rivers? Would they be held, too? It would be impossible to tell them apart, and so all must be collected together. But where would they be taken? And when? Each population would have a unique run timing. Imagine each population as an alarm clock set to go off at a different time. There was no acceptable water supply near Rock Island Dam for rearing ponds, but there was sufficient clean water and a good location at Icicle Creek, a Wenatchee River tributary near the town of Leavenworth, 42 miles from the dam by highway.

Brennan’s plan was to collect adult salmon and steelhead at Rock Island Dam and haul them by truck to release sites on the Wenatchee, Okanogan, Methow and Entiat rivers. Ultimately, the Leavenworth hatchery would produce fish to supplement the runs in these rivers. Brennan knew it would be impossible to naturally produce as many fish in the 677 miles of those four tributaries below Grand Coulee as in the 1,100 miles of tributaries above the dam where most of the captured fish would have spawned. So hatchery production would supplement natural production. “Instead of a natural crop of young fish from these four tributaries, it becomes necessary to produce an intensified crop far in excess of that which could be produced naturally,” he wrote. And these fish would be different from other hatchery fish. They would be bigger — closer to the size they would have been had they been hatched above Grand Coulee and migrated to the sea naturally. “Such a program may offset the damage done by Grand Coulee Dam; ordinary hatching and liberation in the young fry stage cannot,” he wrote. These were not pristine rivers.

In fact, they suffered some of the same problems as modern-day rivers. For example, the Okanogan River was “a sluggish, slow-moving stream” whose chief salmon-producing tributary, Salmon Creek, was so heavily pumped for irrigation “that it’s rehabilitation for salmon reproduction is impossible,” Brennan wrote. The Methow supported salmon, but the small size of the run likely was due to the impact of a hydropower dam constructed at its mouth in 1915 and removed in 1929, and the fact that the river “has a particularly large number of irrigation diversions.” The Entiat, in contrast, was an excellent salmon river — with few salmon. Like the Methow, the Entiat once had a power dam near its mouth, which later was removed. The dam blocked salmon, and the damage was done. The Wenatchee River’s salmon runs suffered from large irrigation and power diversions. Each of the rivers had unscreened diversions that were lethal to juvenile fish. It wasn’t ideal, but it was all they had to work with. The trapping and hauling began in May 1939.

Fish were trapped at Rock Island Dam, transferred to a tank truck and then transported to releases sites — two in the Wenatchee drainage (Icicle Creek and a spot on the main river called Monitor) and one each on the Methow, Entiat and Okanogan rivers. In the process, the biologists learned a good deal about salmon. For instance, they learned that even though water temperature in the unrefrigerated tank truck rose steadily, there seemed to be little effect on the fish. In the three-hour hauls to Oroville, on the Okanogan, and Twisp, on the Methow, the water temperature would rise by as much as 16.2 degrees. One time, the water temperature on arrival at Oroville was 79.7 degrees, about 12 degrees above lethal for salmon. But, according to the report, “these fish were certainly as lively and appeared, outwardly, at least, as healthy as any fish hauled.” There was concern, however, for the viability of the eggs and sperm following such a temperature shock. The biologists also learned about the importance of properly oxygenated water during transport.

During one haul to Icicle Creek, the oxygen pump broke down during and 29 out of 30 salmon were dead on arrival. In general, though, the biologists were impressed with the resiliency of the fish. Upon releasing fish from the tank truck, many were noted with scars, gouges and other wounds, but these fish would revive in the water and swim off apparently unaffected. They were hearty fish — they are hearty fish today — but in 1938 they faced a gauntlet strikingly familiar to the one modern salmon face. There were dozens of gravity diversions for irrigation on each river — 73 total on the four rivers, not including the complete diversion of Salmon Creek, plus diversions on the Okanagan in British Columbia above Lake Osoyoos. Also, there were numerous irrigation pump stations that lacked fish screens. All told, the gravity diversions alone accounted for all but roughly 100 cubic feet per second of the combined average flow of all four rivers. As happens today, rivers can be overappropriated, and when flows are below average, the rivers can run dry. There were diversions for hydropower dams, too — three on the Wenatchee River alone.

“The thousands of young fish diverted are practically all killed when the ditch is dried up in the fall,” according to the report. “Also, the diversion of this quantity of water actually renders some of the streams (particularly the tributaries of the Methow) unfit for the upstream migration of the adults in the fall, as well as strongly decreasing the feeding and shelter area for the young fish.” This was the habitat that was supposed to rebuild the fish runs lost to Grand Coulee Dam. The desperate situation — one might say the seeming futility of the restoration effort — was not lost on the men who were handed this difficult task in 1938. Brennan’s report comments: “To the most casual observer it is an increasing source of wonder that any adult salmon are able to reach the spawning grounds and, once reached, that enough of the small salmon are able to return to the sea to maintain a run of any size. As a matter of fact, the salmon runs into these streams are at present in an extreme state of depletion. Irrigation and water power developments are the two principal causes.

Mining and domestic pollution are not yet important factors, but are potentially so.” In March 1940, the trapping and hauling began for the second year. Some of the fish were taken to the Leavenworth hatchery, now completed. On August 6, 1941, the first salmon reared at the hatchery, 50,000 fingerling Chinook, were trucked to the Entiat River and released. Later, other hatchery progeny were released into the Methow, Okanagon and Wenatchee rivers, and by 1942 the adult progeny of fish that had been trapped and transported up to three years earlier began returning to spawn. The Bureau of Reclamation claimed victory in 1943 — the same year no salmon or steelhead showed up at the base of Grand Coulee Dam attempting to continue upriver — and sought to turn over the Leavenworth hatchery and its related facilities to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. By 1949, ownership had been transferred to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

While it is true that salmon were returning to spawn, they were not returning in numbers even close to pre-dam counts and, of course, none of these fish was destined to spawn above Grand Coulee. In 1933, the year construction began at Grand Coulee, 51,879 salmon swam through the fish ladders at Rock Island Dam. Through 1942, the highest count was 35,000, and most years were far lower. Paul Pitzer, in his history of the dam, Grand Coulee: Harnessing a Dream, concludes it simply isn’t known whether the salmon transplant experiment was a success. Other impacts damaged the salmon runs, including the construction of new dams downstream, construction of irrigation systems on tributaries, diseases at the hatcheries, overfishing and pollution. “In the 1930s, when the dams were the highest priority, the salmon survived more through good luck than government efforts,” he wrote. Meanwhile, north of the border Canada appears to have been truly indifferent to the loss of salmon and steelhead from Grand Coulee.

It is true that a few citizens spoke against the destruction of the Canadian Columbia River runs at the public hearings conducted by the International Joint Commission at Trail, B.C., and Spokane in 1941. But neither British Columbia nor Canadian federal fishery agencies registered concerns at the hearings, and the citizens who spoke seemed more interested in ensuring that the Americans who killed the runs would provide replacement fish in compensation. In fact, the state of Washington eventually built two hatcheries to release fish — trout and kokanee — into Lake Roosevelt as partial compensation for the loss of salmon and steelhead. Canadian federal officials were not entirely silent on the matter, however. In October 1934, as the initial site preparations were underway at Grand Coulee, the Canadian Legation in Washington, D.C., took note of the fact that the high dam — with no fish passage facilities — meant ruin for Canadian Columbia River salmon. The Legation expressed its concern in a letter to the federal Ministry of Fisheries in Ottawa. The reply to that letter, signed by Deputy Minister William A.

Found, concluded: “The assumption that there is no commercial salmon fishery on the Columbia River in Canada is correct, and hence Canadian interests in that respect will not be affected if the dam at Grand Coulee is not equipped with fishway facilities.” Remarkably, the Canadian government wrote off Columbia River salmon because there would be no adverse economic impact from their loss. In 1936, three years after construction began, the Columbia River still was flowing over the foundation of Grand Coulee Dam. By 1938, the rising dam would block the river. Credit: Spokane Public Library About the Columbia River: Grand Coulee Dam to Bonneville Dam | Columbia River | US EPA About the Columbia River: Grand Coulee Dam to Bonneville Dam Learn about key projects in other parts of the basin Lower Columbia: Bonneville Dam to the Pacific Ocean The middle portion of the Columbia River runs over 450 miles from Grand Coulee Dam to Bonneville Dam, where the river serves as the boundary between Oregon and Washington. The Snake River flows in from Idaho and is the largest tributary of the Columbia River. The Snake was once home to at least a third of the salmon run in the Basin.

Below are summaries of key EPA projects in the middle section of the Columbia River basin. Hanford Cleanup Site in Richland, Washington The U.S. Department of Energy Hanford Site, located near the City of Richland, Washington, was established to produce nuclear materials for national defense. The Hanford Site was placed on EPA's National Priorities List of contaminated sites in 1989. The Department of Energy entered into the Tri-Party Agreement with EPA and the Washington Department of Ecology, establishing the legal framework and schedule for cleaning up Hanford. EPA has an office in Richland to help oversee the cleanup. EPA's role in cleaning up the Hanford Site Walla Walla River Basin Pesticide Stewardship Project Monitoring in two tributaries in the Walla Walla River watershed near Milton-Freewater, Oregon showed a stunning 90 to 95% reduction in the average concentrations of chemical chlorpyrifos (Lorsban) - an insecticide used to control pests on fruit trees and other crops - between 2006 and 2011.

The dramatic reduction coincides with a wide range of pesticides management practices implemented by farmers since 2006, including: Reducing pesticide drift, which happens when pesticides are applied in ways that allow chemical droplets to move off the farm site, such as during windy weather; Installing weather stations to ensure pesticides are applied when weather conditions are best; Using non-chemical pest management techniques such as disrupting the mating cycles of pest insects; Using less toxic alternative chemicals to control pests. Similar dramatic reductions in average concentrations of the herbicide diuron (Karmex) were also observed in those same tributaries between 2009 and 2013. The local irrigation districts in the areas reduced the use of diuron by relying on mechanical controls for weeds on ditch banks, as well as occasional spot spraying of a less toxic and persistent herbicide. The pesticides monitoring was part of an Oregon Pesticide Stewardship Partnership Project - a collaborative program funded largely by EPA grants that involves participation by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, watershed councils, Oregon State University Extension Service, Oregon Department of Agriculture, agricultural producer groups, tribes, soil and water conservation districts, and local chemical suppliers.

The program also helps organize pesticide collection events for old, unusable pesticides that were used in the past - such as DDT - to make sure they do not get into the environment. In July of 2014, over 15,000 pounds of waste pesticides were collected from growers and pesticide applicators on the Oregon side of the Walla Walla Watershed. Questions? Contact Kevin Masterson (masterson.kevin@deq.state.or.us), Oregon Department of Environmental Quality; or Mary Lou Soscia (soscia.marylou@epa.gov), EPA. Indian Creek Watershed Outreach in Nampa, Idaho Indian Creek, which flows through Nampa, Idaho, is a tributary of the Snake River. EPA has awarded the City of Nampa two grants, a small Urban Waters grant and a Special Project Environmental Justice Grant to develop a public education and outreach campaign on stormwater management focusing on the Hispanic community (the Boise/Nampa/Caldwell area is home to one of the fastest-growing Hispanic populations in Idaho). As a result, Nampa's Stormwater Program Team is working to increase the community's awareness of stormwater impacts on water quality in Indian Creek and other local water bodies.

These efforts include a bilingual stormwater website which won the 2012 Idaho Press Club competition, bilingual tip sheets for stormwater management, a bilingual storybook that teaches children about the impacts of stormwater runoff, and bilingual stormwater/watershed educational signage at City Acres Park, a popular local park adjacent to Indian Creek. Corporate partners and the local school district are helping with stream cleanup days to foster increased community involvement. EPA has continued a partnership with the City of Nampa to provide EPA Urban Waters funding to continue work efforts to increase community awareness and participation. "Grand Coulee Dam" ~ Woody Guthrie Words and Music by Woody Guthrie Well, the world has seven wonders that the trav'lers always tell, Some gardens and some towers, I guess you know them well, But now the greatest wonder is in Uncle Sam's fair lang, It's the big Columbia River and the big Grand Coulee Dam. She heads up the Canadian Rockies where the rippling waters glide, Comes a-roaring down the canyon to meet the salty tide, Of the wide Pacific Ocean where the sun sets in the West And the big Grand Coulee country in the land I love the best.

In the misty crystal glitter of that wild and wind ward spray, Men have fought the pounding waters and met a watery grave, Well, she tore their boats to splinters but she gave men dreams to dream Of the day the Coulee Dam would cross that wild and wasted stream. Uncle Sam took up the challenge in the year of 'thrity-three, For the farmer and the factory and all of you and me, He said, "Roll along, Columbia, you can ramble to the sea, But river, while you're rambling, you can do some work for me." Now in Washington and Oregon you can hear the factories hum, Making chrome and making manganese and light aluminum, And there roars the flying fortress now to fight for Uncle Sam, Spawned upon the King Columbia by the big Grand Coulee Dam.

Question: On which river is the Grand Coulee Dam?
Answer: Columbia